San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth

The San Francisco Chronicle has posted an article on the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth, which is an experiment to drill nearly 2 miles down into the fault zone and study this area. This article talks about the progress they’ve been making over the last two years and the latest results. Scientists drilling into the San Andreas fault to catch earthquakes right in the act of starting reported Wednesday they have finally penetrated the fault’s active zone, a region two miles deep where clusters of tiny quakes continually rattle the earth underground. The successful borehole marks a major milestone in an effort to understand how quakes originate, how they grow into violent temblors that can rupture the surface for miles, and whether scientists might learn to predict them.